U.S. stocks drop in last hour, after early advance

U.S. stocks fell Tuesday as an early advance fizzled in the last hour of trading.

Energy stocks rose with the price of oil while consumer discretionary stocks were among the biggest decliners. Utility stocks also dragged down the major indices.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 5.43 points, or 0.03 percent, to 17,875.42. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 4.29 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,076.33. The Nasdaq composite lost 7.08 points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,910.23.

Stocks were modestly higher most of the day but sank right before the close. The Dow Jones utility index, an index representing 15 of the nation’s largest utility companies, fell 1 percent.

HBO Now streaming service launches on Apple products

HBO Now, the stand-alone streaming service, launched Tuesday morning on Apple products, HBO said. Separately, Cablevision’s Optimum Online customers also now have access to the subscription HBO service.

The service costs $14.99 a month, although people who sign up in April receive the service free for one month. The groundbreaking move has been anticipated since HBO Chief Executive Richard Plepler unveiled the service during an Apple product conference last month in San Francisco.

The service marks the first time HBO programming is being offered directly to consumers. Before now, people had to subscribe to a pay-TV package offered by a cable or satellite TV operator and then pay extra for HBO’s premium channels.

Report finds job openings up 3.4 percent in February

A Labor Department report Tuesday showed that job openings surged 3.4 percent to 5.1 million in February – a 14-year high. That’s a clear sign that companies are willing to boost their staffs.

The figure follows a disappointing jobs report on Friday, which showed that employers added only 126,000 jobs in March. That was the weakest number in 15 months, and followed 12 straight months of job gains above 200,000.

Only 60 percent of people surveyed would buy homes

Only 60 percent of participants in Fannie Mae’s most recent monthly national survey, released Tuesday, said they would buy a home if they were to move, down 5 percentage points from last month to an all-time low since June 2010.

Meanwhile, the share of people who said it was a good time to sell a home reached a survey high of 46 percent.

Economists at the agency attributed the falling desire to buy a home to concerns about household income now and in the future.

– From news service reports